While there is much uncertainty concerning Kennedy’s policies to encourage healthy eating, one very likely action will be to eliminate sugary sodas from being purchased with food stamps. This confronts one of the least discussed aspects of the liberal value system: In no circumstances should government anti-poverty policies impose behavioral requirements on recipients.
This belief undoubtedly was the reason why Michelle Obama rejected calls for sugary drink exclusion during her husband’s administration. The Department of Agriculture, which administers the food-stamp program, found that almost 10 percent of household food-stamp expenditures were on sweetened beverages and another 10 percent on desserts, salty snacks, candy, and sugar. As a result, a number of states and cities proposed excluding sweetened beverages and junk food from the allowable food-stamp purchases.
By contrast, Michelle Obama focused her efforts on promoting fresh fruits and vegetables, which led to increases in the value of food stamps spent on these items. Examining whether banning sugary drinks would affect obesity rates more than incentivizing fruits and vegetables, researchers found that the incentive program was less effective. Banning sugary drinks, they found, would “significantly reduce obesity prevalence and Type 2 diabetes incidence, particularly among ages 18 to 65 and some racial and ethnic minorities.”
When heavy lobbying by beverage companies successfully convinced the Department of Agriculture to block the exclusion strategy, Michelle Obama was silent. Did she believe that food stamp restrictions would be too paternalistic or a blaming-the-victim strategy? We will never know the reason for her silence because a fawning liberal media had no interest in asking her this or any other tough question.
Behavior modification strategies were the centerpiece of President Clinton’s “Make Work Pay” strategy. In 1993, 21.9 percent of black women, 15-19 years old, were pregnant, resulting in 11.0 percent giving birth, 7.6 percent having abortions, and 3.2 percent having miscarriages. While some like Kathryn Edin tried to put a positive spin on young motherhood, most analysts believed that behaviors and personal circumstances had to change for black women to move forward.
Indeed, many of these young women were victimized by their male partners. The Center for Impact Research found that among teenage black mothers who were on welfare, 55 percent had experienced some form of domestic violence from their partner in the past year. They were trapped in relationships because welfare payments were insufficient to survive so they needed the additional income their partners provided.
Clinton’s program substantially increased the welfare payments provided but it required the welfare recipient to enter work-related programs: from work-readiness initiatives for immediate employment to community college programs.
Major corporations willingly provided employment opportunities with consistent success. Giant Food, Marriott, Sprint, United Airlines, UPS, and Xerox found that they retained a larger proportion of former recipients than other entry-level employees. United Airlines, for example, had retained 70 percent of the 760 recipients hired one year earlier; the retention rate for others hired at similar jobs was only 40 percent. As a result, the employment rate of black never-married women increased from 47 percent in 1995 to 66 percent by 2000.
Despite these successes that provided a foundation for the subsequent increases in black female earnings and educational attainment, and a dramatic drop in teen birth rates, liberals continue to vilify Clinton’s initiative because of the behavioral requirements imposed.
The liberal rejection of behavior modification strategies also includes other public policy approaches. With housing policies, liberals champion “housing first:” Housing vouchers should not require any behavioral requirements, like entering drug treatment or work-related programs.
It currently reflects the reason why conservatives have balked at extending the child tax credit expansion enacted during the Biden administration; a policy that allowed families to receive the full credit with zero income rather than having modest wage income to receive the maximum credit. Liberals even reject having a work or training requirement for adult recipients of food stamps with no dependent children. When Maine instituted this requirement, there was a dramatic reduction in recipients from this group.
Liberals are fearful that embracing any of these behavioral requirements will open them up for criticism and accusations of embracing the blaming-the-victim strategies. For blacks in particular, the claims of structural racism make it impossible for many to enforce behavioral requirements on the poor. Most liberals are forced to claim that harmful behaviors are solely a function of a lack of funds to purchase adequate food or housing. Once individuals no longer have these material deficiencies, they will act appropriately.
It is likely that attempts to initiate a food-stamp exclusion of sugary sodas will come early in the Trump administration. Second, a child tax credit initiative that will reinstate earnings requirements to gain the full credit may be in the works. Let’s hope that these two initiatives are successful as they will better the lives of all children.
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Robert Cherry is an American Enterprise Institute adjunct fellow who is completing a book, Arab Citizens of Israel: How Far Have They Come? (Wicked Sons, Fall 2025).